After a meeting by the Council, a group of mages are drafted for dealing with the city's spiritual problems. At the behest of Provost Ishtar and her contacts, a meeting is arranged at the Promethean, the Silver Ladder's headquarters. Mammon and Colt, alerted by their mentor Athaliah, are the first to arrive, followed by Adele and Valkyrie. Ishtar explains the mission. To begin their work, the ghosts of Wabash Avenue are become more violent and scaring Sleepers. The local cabals the Dreamcatchers and Chthonic Road accuse each other of starting the problem. They need to find the root cause and help defuse the situation. In compensation for their services they will receive 12 pawns of tass per month and a favor to be named later.
Once the arrangements are made the group visits the the Dreamcatchers at their sanctum, which was also the office of their magazine, the Unfettered Quill. Ernst, a member from the Mysterium, meets them at the door. Inside they meet Dickinson, who explains the problem. According to her, the ghosts had been riled up by the Chthonic Road. The group was trying to scare away the artists and other new tenants from the neighborhood, hindering the gentrification of the area. After some discussion, the group learns that the ghosts started getting worse several months ago. The hauntings were happening at several locations along Wabash Avenue, including a couple locations not associated with the Dreamcatchers. The cabal gives them keys to access their buildings.
The group then explores the locations of the ghost sightings. They visit the ghost of an old man who died on a street corner and now haunts it. Despite his hostility to blacks, Adele manages to calm him. Unfortunately he was not able to express what had riled him up. Investigating the buildings yields more clues however. All were tainted with a heavy resonance of greed. Along the way they encounter the Chthonic Road. Virgil and Lindenbrock warn that the Dreamcatchers were causing the problem by altering the resonance of the region. The greed is affecting the ghosts, making them more possessive and troublesome. The two also tell them they are trying to protect the city dwellers from dark things beneath the city by warning them away. They tell them the sigil to look out for and then leave for the underground areas of Chicago.
Examining the buildings in more detail, they uncover the marks of the Chthonic Road on a few but not all of the buildings. Valkyrie is able to discern a geomantic pattern to the buildings' structure, focusing the resonance. They also find an image of the Fortuna Redux in each. Investigating further they find the remodeling in each building was done by a company called Fortuna Redux, founded by a deceased architect named Michael Burgess. Mammon uncovers a large network of these remodelings across the city, including the building he lives at. Colt, remembering that a neighbor of his once knew Burgess, heads home. Valkyrie discusses the findings with Cicero and learns there have been other strange resonances in the city of both Greed and Charity.
As Colt arrives home, he finds smoke billowing out of his building. A fire started in his neighbor's apartment. He hurries to Ellsworth's apartment and finds the old man dead of smoke inhalation. After pulling him to the paramedics he spots something moving in a nearby alley. He chases after it and it flees. Eventually he loses it by a busy street where he finds its cast off clothes and broken pieces of plaster and wood. Adele is able to scrutinize the remains. It appears the plaster was once animate and has an aura of greed...